Stay
by androidilenya
Summary: Aredhel and Elenwë: a story in five parts. (Warnings for canonical character death.)
1. we know how to fly

**1/5: Irissë (Aredhel) and Elenwë cliff-diving in Valinor**

* * *

"It's not so high," Irissë scoffed when Elenwë showed her the cliff above the mountain pool, already rolling up her sleeves. "Bet I can beat you up, anyway."

The Vanya gave her a small smile and leapt up onto the first ledge, bare legs flashing. Irissë followed, keeping close behind her, sure that the delicate, bookish girl couldn't keep up that pace for long.

To her surprise, Elenwë scaled the cliff with graceful ease (the shower of pebbles that hit Irissë full in the face and delayed her for several seconds was very clearly _deliberate_). She also beat Irissë by a good bodylength, and sat down at the edge to watch her struggle up the last stretch.

"How was the climb?" she asked sweetly as Irissë dragged herself over the edge, resorting to an embarrassingly inelegant kick to swing her legs over.

"Very well, you win," Irissë gasped out, holding up her hands in defeat. "Happy?"

Elenwë offered her a hand, smiling again. When Irissë took it she pulled her forward with surprising strength, toppling them both over the edge of the cliff, down towards the sparkling water. Irissë's startled yelp was muffled by Elenwë's lips, fastened on hers, both of them suspended in the rushing wind––

They hit the surface and she inhaled water, gasping and wrenching free of Elenwë to claw her way to the surface.

"I've always wanted to do that," Elenwë laughed, surfacing beside her, and Irissë sent an irritable splash of water her way.

"Next time _ask_ for a kiss instead of dragging me off a cliff, then."

"Very well." Elenwë swam closer, grinning. "May I?"

"Of course you may," Irissë muttered, closing her eyes.


	2. sky of flowers

**2/5: Valinor: Surprise kissing, flower crowns, etc. **

* * *

She kisses Elenwë in the light of the Mingling, deep in the dusty recesses of Tirion's library. The air smells of old books and fresh ink, Elenwë's papers are spread out across a heavy table, and they are completely alone.

Elenwë's smile is worth the three hours Irissë has spent in this stuffy building.

.

Irissë takes Elenwë on a long hunting trip (over the concerns of her father and Turukáno that Elenwë has never been hunting) and shows her how to set a snare, how to fire an arrow. In the evenings, they share a sleeping pallet beneath the arching branches, amid the fallen leaves. This deep in the woods, there is a band of stars visible in the northern sky during the softer light of Telperion, silver fading into black pinpricked with light.

Elenwë names the fragments of constellations visible to the north, and tells Irissë of the long tapestries woven for the Minyar by Vairë at the behest of Varda, illustrating the shapes traced by the patterns of the stars.

The next morning, Irissë finds a field of forget-me-not and nasturtium and weaves color into Elenwë's hair, blue and orange stars against a golden field.

.

After Elenwë's betrothal to her brother, Irissë corners her in the silver-lit garden and presses her lips to the Vanya's mouth, tasting sweet wine and sugar there.

"We should not," Elenwë begins, but her hands clutch at Irissë's as though she never wants to release them, and the gleam in her eyes is not of aversion. Irissë tilts her head to one side, smiling.

"Do you care about what we _ought_ to do?"

Elenwë shakes her head and kisses her back.


	3. kept secrets

**3/5: Irissë and a wedding.**

* * *

Even once Elenwë is to wed Turukáno, Irissë can't help but wish she could change what has to happen.

She dreams about pale hands and golden hair falling over bare skin, and wakes with a plea on her lips. She pens long letters that she consigns to the fire before the ink has dried, watching them curl and blacken and fall to ash.

_Let's run away, Elenwë, and never come back. Across the Sea, where the light of the Trees has never fallen, and you will be my Laurelin for all the rest of our long years, and I your faithful hunter._

In her more wistful moments, she outlines plans and lists what they would need – a good ship of Alqualondë-make, supplies, a refuge on the far side of the sea. She is still friends with Artanis, perhaps they could get a ship from Eärwen's kin. Supplies can be stolen, and refuges made.

All she needs is someone to run away with.

She hesitates too long (knows reality too well), and the wedding proceeds with Elenwë very much present. Irissë claps with the rest, and smiles till her face hurts.

When she returns to her home, she tears a strip of parchment and scribbles Elenwë's name on it, over and over, nothing more. She can't think of anything to put down.

After some thought, she burns this, too.


	4. warmer here (in your arms)

**4/5: On the Helcaraxë, sharing warmth.**

* * *

Elenwë had not thought that there could be warmth on the Ice, had barely even remembered that there was such a thing - perhaps, indeed, those golden days under the light of Laurelin had been but a dream, and a fading one at that. Even the stars here were shrouded and cold, and too far away for their light to reach those on the groaning ice.

And yet, somehow, warmth remained.

Aredhel had caught her shuddering with cold in the corner of the tent she shared with Turgon and had knelt beside her without a word, throwing her cloak over Elenwë's shoulders and drawing her close. Elenwë had hesitated, then leaned in, drawn by the fluttering warmth of her sister-in-law's heart, the heat that sank in through layers of clothing to her own pale skin.

"You need to take better care of yourself," Aredhel whispered into her hair, and Elenwë closed her eyes and focused on how _nice_ that felt, how very odd it felt to not be cold anymore - or, at the very least, to have the chill that lingered in her bones driven so deep she could barely feel it.

"It's too cold," she replied, lips barely moving, and: "I'm so tired, Iressë." She felt Aredhel tense, but couldn't bring herself to worry - it was so nice and warm here, in her arms.

"Stay right here," Aredhel murmured, and Elenwë nodded, wishing she could.


	5. the ice claimed you as its own

**5/5: Helcaraxë: what it means to lose everything.**

* * *

_You were always the bright one, the smiling one_, Aredhel thought as a dark bundle was lowered through the ice, and it was so _wrong, _this ending, because this wasn't how it was supposed to have happened.

(_We will leave for a new land, and truly live for the first time_, they had all said, and Elenwë's eyes and been bright and earnest, _yes we will, and we will be free_)

They had neither of them been afraid. Perhaps they should have been.

And the ice still stretched on before them, unending, a spiking of white beneath a dark dome unlit by stars, as if the clinging mists had extinguished even Varda's lights. Elenwë had always loved the stars, and Aredhel had loved the silver nights in Valinor, when they lay on a hilltop and traced their destiny in the stars.

_Those will lead us to a new land_, she had said after the disaster in Alqualondë, pointing to the stars that still shone despite it all (because truthfully, part of Aredhel expected it all to have just _stopped _after the first dying scream, for the world to have ceased to hurtle onwards—it never did, and thereafter she never hoped it would). And if Elenwë's sword had been stained dark in that same starlight, Aredhel had pretended not to notice, just as she pretended she did not have to wash her own knives over and over until she thought she would scrub the metal into nothingness in an attempt to wash out the stains that never really faded.

And she had believed, because by then it had been too late to turn back, and she had never been one to admit that she had made a mistake.

The ice claimed many, so many that she could see the terror on her brother's face, the kindling rage in her father's dark eyes—he would make the ones who doomed them pay for the blood they had spilled, he said, and she screamed inside, _they spilled no blood, blood cannot run in a frozen waste like this, they doomed us to nothing but our own stubborn stupidity, forcing us onwards––and what then, atar, what do we do when we are all frozen corpses in shrouds, drifting beneath the ice?_

It seemed cruel, after all that, to doom the ones who fell to an eternity adrift under an unmoving sheet of unforgiving white, but there was nowhere to bury the dead in an unyielding field.

_Keep me warm_, Elenwë had begged, a terrible paleness in her face, and Aredhel had wrapped her arms around her and given her all she could, wishing she could give more—give until she was bled of her last drop of warmth, until she was ice and Elenwë was fire, as she had once been.

And then the ice, and after all that (Turukáno's screams and the child's wails, the splash of half-frozen water burning her hands as she lunged forward, reaching) it seemed a shame to pull her out only to put her back under again, let her go for the last time.

(_Keep me warm, until the end_––and she hadn't even been able to do that, hadn't been able to breathe warmth back into Elenwë's lips though she had _tried_, the tears streaming down her face freezing on her cheeks, her breath fogging the air until she could barely see the face before her, and it changed nothing)

When the bundle disappeared beneath the ice, she stood up and walked on, never looking back. If she had, she thought she might have fallen to her knees, joined Elenwë under the ice once and for all.

_Onwards, then, for you._


End file.
